A Reflection of Who I Am

For the previous three days I had been suffering from a really strange freak occurrence. I bent down to pick something up from the floor and when I stood I had a really sharp pain in my lower back. Old age…I know.

The pain was so bad that I could not move without flinching or having a really hard time getting up and down. Lying comfortably in bed…forget it. Last night I began practicing what I preach on The-Bioactive-Wall Page. Visit my page if you’re on Facebook and hit the LIKE button at the top and follow my posts.

I woke up this morning with very little pain, and as I write this post I have zero pain. I drank 4 oz this morning when I woke and I’m about to have another 4 oz. I drink 2-3 oz on a daily basis.

I am otherwise very healthy with bouts of hypertension caused by stress and border-line high cholesterol caused by poor eating habits when I’m stressed and I’m off my exercise routine. I cannot say enough about the benefits of drinking this beverage daily for the past five years.

My dexa scan for osteoporosis in 2006, at age 55, showed that my AP Lumbar Spine -2.5. This indicated that I was in the Osteoporosis range in my lumbar spine area. This indicated that I had low bone density. My Left Hip registered -1.0 which also indicated a low bone density but in the osteopenia range.

The T-Scores are:

-1 or above Normal

<-1 to >-2.5 Osteopenia

-2.5 or below Osteoprosis

On February 3rd of this year, I had a second dexa scan. The findings were as follows:

Left Femoral Neck: -1.3

Left Total Hip: -0.7

Lumbar Spine (L1-L4) -1.6

There didn’t appear to be significant change, yet my numbers were no longer in the osteoporosis range. “…the 10 year risk of a major osteoporotic related fracture is 3.5%. National Osteoporosis Foundation threshold for treatment 20% or greater) and the 10 year risk of a hip fracture is .3% (National Osteoporosis Foundation threshold of 3% or more).

The range that I placed above is based on the T-score for the number of standard deviations for a normal young adult. At this writing I will be 62 in June of this year. 🙂

I share all of this because I sit in church and I watch my fellow friends coming through the doors on painful knees and hips or they are recipients of hip or knee replacements. My heart aches for them, as well as my aging family members, because I know that what I drink proactively everyday is girding up my bones and muscles to withstand the aging process. Not stop it, but it allows my body to age gracefully.

I am currently on a campaign to lower my cholesterol because during the 6 months between my sister’s death in July, and my brother’s death in January, I did not take care of myself the way I preach to you. I ate at fast food restaurants driving between Maryland and New Jersey while making arrangements for my sister’s cremation and bringing her remains back to Philly. I ate fast food while traveling between home and Philly to see my brother in Hahnemann Hospital up until the day of his death.

Since my blood test on January 17th, I used a home test to monitor my cholesterol the first week in February and my cholesterol has dropped 30 points. I am monitoring it because I do not want to use the Lipitor prescription prescribed by my doctor. Why? Because of the side effects. Read the information from their website: http://bit.ly/lipitor-sideeffects.

I have one functioning kidney (a birth defect) that has been checked and is the normal size and functioning perfectly. I use to suffer from a condition called NASH – Non-Alcoholic Systemic Hepatitis (a fatty-tissue liver)–my AST and ALT numbers were very high during the 90s and neither of the two doctors that I saw could diagnose what was going on. After a home care nurse told me that the reason I was turned down for life insurance was called NASH. I was able to fight it and stabilize my AST and ALT numbers for the first time in 2004. Since then my liver has been normal.

I found comfort that my current doctor also know what NASH was and confirmed that diet and exercise were the way to combat it since I did not want to go on medication.

In the past two years, I have personally lost eight friends and family members ranging from the age 38-65. This is why I am so stubborn about being proactive about my health and why I drink my Extra Bioactive drink everyday. I am also on our FIT Body Composition program which is helping me get rid of unhealthy fat and replacing it with lean muscle. In January 2011 I was on my way to size 16. Today, I go between size 12 and 14. If I was consistent with my exercise routine, I would be at my goal size 8. Who knows, by my 62nd birthday in June I could be there. 😉